As promised, here’s the post on IRCTC – India’s largest ecommerce site. I tell you how it does not work, and how we can make it work! Last Thursday, I decided to go to Ahmedabad for some work. Went on to IRCTC to book a train ticket. I logged in, and entered the date of the travel and selected other options to find out what are the available options. What came up after two minutes’ wait was a blank page. I backed up and tried it again. And it asked me to login again. Did that, filled up the travel plan, and tried again. Blank page again!
Tried with another browser, same blank page. After struggling for an hour, I could finally see the list of available train. New screen, new challenges. Now the availability check option kept giving me blank pages. Or “Not Available” status. If there was no reservation possible in that train, why show me that option in the first place?
My commitment to book the ticket was higher than the tantrums the IRCTC site kept throwing on me. After about three hours of efforts, I could find a train and reservation option combination that was available. Went on for the online payment. Entered the credit card details. I was happy that finally my ticket will be booked. Hit the submit button, the system told me that it’s processing the payment. The next page came up, and said “Communication failure“, the payment was not processed. It said I could go to my “Failed payments” page, and see the transaction.
Too much to expect! I did not see the transaction in failed payment page either. What that means, is I have to now start the whole thing over again, pray god that things go smooth, and be a privileged customer to get a ticket!
This, after charging a fee for online reservations, and being the number one Indian ecommerce website. Sucks!
I know IRCTC has changed the way we book railway tickets. No more waiting in long queues to book tickets, no more paying high charges to the agents and all that. Frankly, IRCTC did deliver on the promises in the initial years. But lately, it’s been just too slow, just too difficult to use, and it simply doesn’t work!
It doesn’t work again and again. Over the last one year, I have booked more than 50 tickets using the system, and have had problems on more than 40 of them. That’s an 80% failure ratio.
Today, if you wanted to get a ticket through IRCTC, you better be prepared to spend 3 hours on it, or do it at 7AM (which is when I succeeded in getting that 20% success).
Frustrated with this experience, we sat down to find a solution. We developed a small rich internet application that will make the entire rail reservation process easier. We expect it will bring up satisfaction levels by 75% or more.
We wrote up a note about this and sent it to IRCTC officials. Contrary to my expectations, they did like the proposal. They agreed that some of the points mentioned, have been on their list too, but they have limitations. Primarily because the backend provider – CRIS – has certain limitations.
I am not willing to buy in these limitations. IRCTC really has a strong value proposition, and it’s a shame if we put brakes on the usage by clunky technology. I say it’s the right time to upgrade IRCTC/CRIS technology. People have been tired of the system for more than a year, and we deserve a better IRCTC!
Checkout the note and the prototype below. Post your comments and ideas here, and we will have IRCTC take notice.
You can download the full report here, and can see the “new and improved” suggested booking process here.
Have you seen IRCTC off late.Its horrible.It doesnt work with firefox.
So IRCTC has gone worse! Their new design tries to copy part of what we did in the prototype here. But it does not work in Firefox.
I don’t know when they will get up and fix this whole thing!
So IRCTC has gone worse! Their new design tries to copy part of what we did in the prototype here. But it does not work in Firefox.
I don’t know when they will get up and fix this whole thing!
Sankarshan asked if anyone knows how to help them get back, well we do! We did propose them a solution 6 months ago, but it did not go through! Let me ping them again 🙂
Hello,
Appreciate your effort and ideas on the interface. In fact I see a good compliment between your thoughts and what we have on 90di.com/travel.
We have done routing for all trains and flights in India. So we are able to show even connecting trains between most places (some 4000 odd) in India. Please note that both IRCTC and the Railways site show only the direct trains between a place and don’t do any routing.
Some features of our site:
1) Routing from any place to any place.
Just try looking for: a) Bikaner (BIKANER JN – BKN(S) , in north-west) to Chennai in the (south-east) and b) ALIGARH (in UP) to TRIVANDRUM (in Kerala)
2) You can see the train routes graphically on the India map.
3) Real-time availability: It shows you the seat availability in real-time.
4) Mixed mode search (Train Flight). It can show routes which combine a flight and a train journey. On 90di.com/travel: Just mention the from and to place (without stn/airport codes) with the travel mode as “Train Flight” and it will show you various options involving flights,trains and both.
So please try it out when you get a chance and give us your feedback.
Hello
Very interesting information! Thanks!
G’night
Hi All/Nirav/Khusnood,
Please tell me how you are able to access information related to the railways from your programs and what API’s do you use? What are the terms & conditions to signed with railways?
Please help.
Thanks
Satya
Hi,
I want to book railway ticket from New Delhi to Kuttippuram via Chennai. Could you kindly explain the formalities.
Thanks
Vinod Nair
Delhi
Hi!,
On 16th oct , I booked 2 slepper Class tickets in 2156 – bhopal Express, from New delhi (NDLS) to Bhopal JN for my journey on 5th DEC 2007.
I paid my money through HDFC Debit and my money Rs. 620 for two tickets got debited. But when the website was getting transferred from HDFC payment gateway back to IRCTC, I got a “Service unavailable”
Plesae let me knowwhat can i do.
Regards,
Vara Prasad.
Hi nice one i liked it and i will give the reference of your post in my blog also.
Thanks for your efforts.
I see this idea was a long time back. Did you get any response from the Indian Railways ?
I have booked my train tickets via internet and as required i have given my driving licence number.But as i have now changed my driving licence to smart card driving licence how should i change it in the reservation details.My train booking is for 7/11/07.please advice
Bharat:
I don’t think you can change the driving licence number once reservation is done. If you have the old licence or a photocopy of that, you can try with that. But do this at your own risk. The ticket checker might not be ok with it.
Sasidhar:
No, we did not get a positive response from IRCTC. They said things are too complex on their backend to do something like this!
IRCTC’s UI has become slightly better. Dunno when they changed this. But, this time around my experience was slightly better. Also, I find erail.in a better option to check for trains and availability of tickets and then proceed to IRCTC to book them. In just 4-5 clicks in erail.in shows loadsa information.
Thanks Nirav for your effrot.
I had different experience. I booked 9 tickets in a row and i was about to book my 10th ticket and once i enetered my payment information (Debit Card), my bank accepted it and after that suddenly on my screen i saw session timeout. I tried to call IRCTC, nad as usual it is busy. For the same train i am booking there are only 10 tickets left and i need to buy 3 tickets, so i re login into site and booked the ticket and it worked. When i look at my bank statement, i paid Rs 979 extra. Then started the fun. I live in Hyderabad and to call IRCTC i have to dia STD and more over the call center is another joke. The IVR works for the initial options and after that it says please stay on the line and no voice. At last i got hold of the guy and he said we already posted and your amount will be in 3 days. It is almost 20 days and there is nothing in my account. Every day i call them and they give me different numbers saying Settlement Id, or transcation ID.. All BS. Today i called in the might night to check with them. They told me they have access to their systems morning 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Also they told me to correspond Via email. On the first day i did that also and there was no reply. Now today the call center guy told me to send email………
It looks like never ending story.
Really i hate this.
IRCTC should have their call center number toll free and they should man more people and avaialable 24/7. Otherwise it doen’t make sense to have a 24/7 website
i have browsing centre and want open e-rail ticket booking counter tell me the suggetion.
Hi Suresh,
I am not sure what’s the process of opening an e-ticket booking center. May be information at this link may provide you some help: http://www.irctc.co.in/RTSA.html
:Nirav
I found this forum just now, however I am using the online service from last 3 years. It has become worst over the time. Of late, I am using it just to check the availability and then ask the agent to book the ticket.
Once I have paid Rs.4400 for a failed tranaction and never got that money back inspite of many mails to IRCTC and ICICI Bank – they blame the other party for the mistake. It was 6 months back and I have lost the hopes to get it back.
Good Job
Lets do it implemented..
regards
Jaswant
Authorities must see some good site.
German Transport system contains. Buses, Trams and Trains in single system with connetivity option too.
It is damn good. We are very good at technology . World is looking to us for new techniques in SW and why we don#t afford sucg efforts to our own daily required faciliy called RAILWAY.
Have a look of the GERMAN site http://www.bahn.de
Regards
Jaswant
Yes, i am not even able to open the home page , keept getting a page not displayed for the irctc site whereas other sites work perfectly well.
The railways needs to be admired for this wonderful service but i wish they would be a little more sensitive to their customers and improve the capacity of this site to handle traffic.
Another useful feature they could add is the facility of telescopic rates.Presently this is only available in manual ticketing.I mean if you are booking from Bangalore to Kolkata (bangalore-chennai and then chennai-kolkata) you will have to book two tickets in irctc for both legs of journey with no discount.
On the other hand,If you buy a ticket from the railway reservation counter ,you request for a ticket from Bangalore- Kolkata and simply mention the chennai-kolkata leg of journey in the onward journey column in the reservation form. This brings great savings over the tickets booked on irctc.This is because the system treats this as one journey from Bangalore to Kolkata and applies railway telescopic rates meaning lower incremental fare for longer journeys. The savings is more pronounced in AC tickets.
I belive that some educated technical professional required to support irctc.co.in.
I am trying to book Tatkal ticket through “Quick Book” and even tickets are available it shows that e-tickets can not be booked waiting list tickets.
When I called Customer Care I got a reply that we can not book Tatkal ticket through quick book. System doesn’t display this message anywhere on the website.
They are least bothered about the public and they are cheating.
Someone should take strict action against technical team involved in irctc.co.in.
Let’s hope that we can improve the work culture, which we all know what work these people are doing.
hey dude its awesome
I actually thought of the same thing and was surfing net to see if this concept is already implemented or not, and not to my surprise like all the enterprising ideas i found your website.I would make a request please start properly advertising your site.
It could be a good earner for you through ad sense and it would be actually a social serice,that many of us ban use for sure,and btw i had a greater failure ratio than yours that was the reason i thought to create same kind of software.
Well thanks for saving me the efforts.
Awesome work done atleast i would save myself a whole lot of time searching for availability in trains.
I was going through Cleartrip and came to know that they have a train search product. Its an awesome product. The best part is that you get to know the fares, availability, time of journey on a single page which has a neat layout. They even use Google maps API to show the train route. Check it out
http://www.cleartrip.com/trains
Hey I totally support Prashant… Cleartrip s rail search is a brilliant product.
IRCTC is excellent. Only they have to improve their technology so as to cope up with the traffic.
Benefits like telescopic booking etc. must be permitted.
Try http://erail.in/#
I use it regularly to check the availability. Has a very simple and effective user interface. It is written in Ajax
Hi,
Your thread on IRCTC made insightful reading. Just now we are stranded in a war between HDFC bank (one of the best rated by IRCTC) and the IRCTC.
From last week, the facility to pay directly has been blocked to the bank. In other words, HDFC bank’s name has disappeared from the IRCTC portal.
Wonder if somebody knows anything about it? Looks like it is a war of the titans and the customers like you and me are the victims.
Hi all, ( luckyly i got thru, here is how ),
i jus went thru the information given here on this page, i liked the suggesions given to the irctc, after reading the post of Nirav i was cursing the irctc coz i suffered the same problem as soon as i submitted my request to debit my credit card the page went blank i did it again the result the same i spoke to citibank CC n confirmed d transaction did not went thru, so i decided to try again i was running aganst the time as it was already 2310hrs this is wen i read Niravs post n wen i was about to give up i scrolled down and read a post of Swati Sani she had mentioned about the ouick book so heres the plan first go to the book tickets menu look up for the fare availabilty train no. and all the relevant information, then close the window completely re login go to quick booking type in all the details and violaaaa ur job is done in xactly 5 mins, so guys cheers n keep booking on line .
Me too had a bad experience with the IRCTC site.
I guess its a common problem.
Once I was checking for the ticket availability for Dharmavaram (AP) and the site was not providing the option in List So I booked my ticket from banglore to pune. Now when train arrived to dharmavaram from banglore the TC has already given my AC sleeper seat to some other guy as after bangalore nobody came for that seat.
So for whole jouney I travelled in non AC after payed for the AC seat.
And IRCTC guys havent provided any solution.
yah I found a thomas cook site which provides a better UI for using IRCTC site.
Hello:
I went through these posting which are over a year old now and even as of yesterday this railway booking site still *#$%#$. This is so frustrating in this age and time!!!!!
Probably this is the site which has the largest Ecommerce volume and look at the frustration !!!
Is there any way we can send the printout to these people and try and get some hearing from the so called administrators of this site. If there is an open question session on TV or something the lines with complaints would choke within seconds.
How long more we have to carry on this frustration?
Have you guys tried out http://www.cleartrip.com/trains
Fastest and easiest way to book trains tickets online.
I dont know why IRCTC is putting advertisements. It is getting enough money from us for internet booking. These advertisements make the web page very slow, also making the server always in trouble..
Have you guys tried out http://www.thomascook.in
Fastest and easiest way to book indian rail trains tickets online. Amazing experiance
this one i think is the best of the lot
easy search n inquires very user friendly n fast to use
http://www.bharatrail.net
it is the best for Indian railways passenger inquiry
Hi Nirav,
Rather than waiting for IRCTC to provide a solution it is the best have a better wrapper around them. Thats exactly what cleartrip, thomas cook, etc.. are doing. If I am not mistaken they do provide a webservice which can be used for calling their APIs.
Any Idea about their WSDL?
One peculiar problem I face with IRCTC is when I have to book between 8 AM – 9 AM. The site just doesn’t loads. I use this site atleast once a week to book tickets, and at few times for TATKAL reservation and more often than not it just give “communication failure” msg. I just feel the techonology which IRCTC is using may not be upto the mark to handle such a huge load of request.
Hi Nirav,
Excellent post. I would actually prefer we stayed with HTML/JavaScript for front end instead of flex 3.0 (I suppose this is the one you are targeting with RIA), the only adv here being better visualization. (Believe me, I have been in RIA for 2 years and know we burnt our fingers). What Indian Railways needs now is not 10 IIM MBAs to roll in the profit, but 6 Software Engineers to make their most accessed site, better.
Hello,
Thanks for posting such a great information on India railways, but I think the main issue with IRCTC is the REFUND.
The refund policy is very bad, it may take more then 3-4 months even after many followups via emails and even send a written complaint to the GM of Indian Railways.. This is the only drawback, our Govt. should take some action and improve the refund policy so that customer do not face at least refund problem.
I am reading this article today, after four years of this post, however I liked it a lot. Anyways as of now, IRCTC has improved a lot and now ticket booking success ration has increased to almost 70-80%. However there are many scope of improvements.
Yes, IRCTC service has improved greatly from when we wrote this post / prepared the report. I am really happy for that!
Mine is a better experience where i paid twice for 1 ticket .Am still waiting for them to repay me.
Hi
I appreciate ur idea, I also have some but dont know where to share. So let me know the same and also ur feedback on this.
Problems with IRCTC:
1) If one wants to make tickets before 1 month of journey, one finds all the tickets booked and now if he wants to commence the journey with train he has to rely on the most uncertain thing of irctc i.e. Tatkal tickets.
2) The other problem is that less reliability of Tatkal tickets and thereby the same is exploited by the agents.
Solution that I admit as cogent:
There should be another quota in railway tickets booking (let say emergency quota). Now it will open before Tatkal tickets just after the completion of reservation tickets booking. Now the different thing in this quota is that the fares of ticket will increases. If 10 % of emergency tickets are going to be booked the fare is also increases by 10% (1.1 times of original fare). Similarly, if 20 % of emergency tickets are going to be booked the fare is also increases by 20% and when the tickets of this quota is going to be full the fare is double of the original one. The beauty of this is that it is beneficial for both irctc as revenue point of view and passengers as convenience. And if one get sure tickets for nearly 1.5 times of the original fare, why he will go to agent and give him 500 bucks more for tatkal tickets? Also there are numerous advantages of this quota if you cogitate over this for few minutes I am sure you will find the most of it.